It has been six months since my last chemo, A lot is changing for me. My head is getting clearer. The ‘chemo brain’ I have known for so long is going away. In its place is a clear appreciation for life around me. Sometimes a little too clear. I get really bothered by the everyday things that chemo sort of blotted out. Paying the bills, getting the medical bills that insurance is still dealing with. Those are some very large numbers. Really, really large numbers, six digits in some cases. That bothers me more these days than it used to. Time was I just piled them up and said someday I will get to them. This is the day Bucko, and it scares the hell out of me. Fortunately most of it has been taken care of by my wife’s insurance.
My hair is finally long enough to get a trim. I had to shave it a few times because chemo just made it a rat’s nest of gray and other hair of indeterminate color. One day I noticed a woman looking at me and my hair, the expression on her face was not complimentary. The next morning I shaved it all off down to bald head. That must have been in April or so. The other day I had to go get my little bit of growth trimmed. I now look like a squared away military guy. My hair is growing slowly, so slowly. I hope that as the chemo fades from my system the hair growth will accelerate back to what it was before I started. At the rate it is growing right now I will need one haircut every six months. But at least it is coming back and gladly it seems to be lighter than it was before this mess.
My fingernails are also recovering. Chemo does some strange things to your nails and callouses. It removes all callouses to start with. Gone, like they were never there. I had the softest hands and feet you ever saw. My fingernails actually went this sort of dirty color of yellow and started breaking into layers. They just separated at the edge like delaminating cardboard.When I would trim them they just sort of broke off in a ragged edge that had to be carefully filed and then any activity turned them into scratchy edges again. Then I noticed that with each infusion there would grow a little furrow. I am not sure if it was a hollow or a ridge, but at one point my nails, including my toenails, had a neat, evenly spaced set of furrows in them. As many as twelve at one time. Since I waited a month after my last infusion for the operation I had a set of yellow furrows and then when the operation happened a big bump followed by the post op infection causing a deep furrow as my health declined to very near dead. The end result was a few ridges, a big bump and then finally clear pink nails behind all the trauma. The bottom half of my nails are now healthy pink and smooth. Like real fingernails should be. I am very happy with my hair and nails now. I spend a lot of time looking at them and being glad that is all over. I pray it doesn’t come again. I have had enough of that.
Then there is the PTSD. PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, marked by certain behavior patterns like inability to recognize the passage of time accurately or a tendency to overreact to almost any event. Maybe you tend to forget things in a sort of spotty memory episode, and usually you cannot remember things in the proper sequence. You literally need to carry a log book to keep track. Then there are the flashbacks to very unpleasant times that can be triggered by almost any suggestion. For instance, my new oncologist is actually a pancreatic oncologist, and we had a long talk. He talked about he would have put me on chemo after the operation. That alone was sufficient to send me around the corner, getting all twisted up abut chemo and losing my hair and my brain. The conversation got sort of difficult to follow after that and I may not have understood all that was said afterward. There are little episodes of PTSD, you just tear up on a moment’s notice, over anything. Puppies, baby ducks, cute pictures, some patriotic scene, a speech, all of these things have brought tears to my eyes. It is getting less and less, but still I have real trouble. When I talk about any part or phase of my hospital stay, the last week in February to the late part of March, I have trouble keeping the sequences and keeping a dry eye. I was literally on my last legs before things got better. And they did not get better very fast. I felt better by the week, in small degrees. Finally after three months since I got out of the hospital I am at about a third of my previous endurance. I push myself very hard. But still I am a weak old man compared to what I was. And I may tear up at a commercial.
Sleep is something that I value very much anymore. I used to have very terrifying nightmares that went on and on, sometimes all night. That doesn’t happen so much anymore. But I wonder about the meaning of the strange dreams I have. And other times I just don’t want to know. But I have finally gotten to the point where with the proper meds and relaxation I can sleep for eight hours. That helps so very much.I have a long way to go. But I am going to do my best every day to beat all this and have a normal day everyday. Up, out of bed and active as I can be. Today I dug the pits to place a bunch of concrete piers for a shed in my side yard. Doesn’t sound tough until I tell you that every hole had to be dug three to four inches deeper than it had to be to get all the roots out and then refilled partially and the pier placed in level with the rest. Each one took about an hour in 95 degree heat. The last one I did today really was tough. I had to dig out an old fence post along with the roots. That required some chainsaw work. I have one more to dig. But tomorrow is another day. Another hot Texas Summer day. But I am up for it. Bill Gillmore
